FILM VIEW; Man's Best Friend and (Perhaps) Successor

I guess it all started sometime in the eighth century B.C. Homer had a problem. His main character, Odysseus, wasn't exactly turning out to be sympathetic. The Greek chieftain had just come home from sacking Troy. And -- as if that weren't bad enough -- he was getting ready to murder a large number of house guests. First, he planned to disguise himself as a beggar. Then he was going to be insulted by the house guests. Then he was going to kill them all.

So the great storyteller did what had to be done: he introduced the dog. Argos hadn't seen his master for 19 years. He was lying in a dung heap, covered with fleas; but when he heard the old man's voice, he raised his head, wagged his tail and dropped his ears. Then he died. Dogs in books and movies have been doing this, or something like it, from that day to this one. They look at us, and they see good. Nobody else can see it, but they can. Often the effort kills them. Sometimes they just have puppies.

Not holding the enviable position of being the first author of epics, many modern-day raconteurs have fallen back on Homer's trick. Sometimes they skip the rest of the odyssey altogether; they start and end with the dog.

And who can blame them? New stories are harder and harder to come by, as are nice ways of looking at people.

We had a bumper crop of dog movies this season. The wise, forgiving St. Bernards of "Beethoven's 2d" -- a sequel to the enormously popular 1992 film "Beethoven" -- are still drawing a crowd. "Iron Will," a Disney film about a dog-sled race, opens on Friday. "Look Who's Talking Now" is a recent memory, as is "Man's Best Friend."

Most dogs in movies are still delivering some variation on Argos's performance: They love their people. But the form has changed. Dog movies nowadays are not what dog movies were 50 or even 10 years ago. For one thing, the dogs have become better actors.

When "Lassie Come Home" opened at Radio City Music Hall in 1943, The Times's critic Bosley Crowther was impressed: "Oftentimes animal pictures make the unhappy mistake of attributing almost human rationalizations to simple four-footed beasts. An outstanding virtue of this picture is that it does nothing of the sort." Crowther liked the movie so much that when praising the cast he ran out of space before he even got to Elizabeth Taylor.

Outside of looking good, and sometimes bad, Lassie's big job in the movie was to escape from her new master and go home. Most of the time this meant heading south. Which is a perfectly good basis for a plot, though it won't exactly get you into the best schools.

This was not uncommon for dog stars of the past. When they had to communicate, they spoke in the manner of Rin Tin Tin. ("O.K., Rinty, if you bark once, that means we should both head for the stockade. If you bark twice, I should go on alone, and come back with help. Bark three times, and I'll buy Time Warner.")

Most dogs still can't talk to people, but they certainly can be made to act. There's trick camera work, of course, but animal training has also become more sophisticated. Joe Camp, who handled the huskies for "Iron Will" and the recent Disney film "Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey" actually managed to convince a cat in that film to go into water.

So dog actors don't just wag their tails and bark. Most of them can open doors, ford rivers and cross streets in heavy traffic. Beethoven can actually roll his eyes and does so frequently. Max, the Tibetan mastiff who stars in "Man's Best Friend," will climb trees and pretend to swallow cats whole. He not only opens doors but also peers through keyholes. Get him really sore, and he'll find out what you're driving and then chew through the brake cables.

Perhaps the most alarming trend is not how smart the animals can be but how stupid the people have become.

Lassie and Old Yeller were clever pets, and sometimes psychic, but they were still dogs, and happy to take second place to the superior intellect of their sometimes wrong-headed people. The dogs were kinder, gentler, more loyal than their humans. But if one family member was going off to college, it wasn't going to be Fido.

That's all changed. And while the chronology may be difficult to delineate exactly, I think it's safe to say that by the time "K-9" came out in 1989, the German shepherd playing opposite James Belushi was not only higher in the I.Q. department, he was also better looking.

As for Beethoven, there's no contest. If a Martian were to drop in on either the big guy's first or second star vehicle, he/she could not help but conclude that the dog is the smartest animal in the household. In the first movie, for instance, the St. Bernard is actually able to discern the contents of a legal document without even reading it. The children are relatively intelligent, for humans that is, but still not nearly as sharp as the pet. The next most intelligent being after the children is the wife. And the dumb one, the almost dangerously stupid member of the tribe, is the man. The husband. If they weren't so lovable, these guys would be kept in pens.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

The Dog Bone with Four-Leaf Cluster goes to Charles Grodin, who has held together both Beethoven movies and subjected himself to every possible indignity. His breakfast is stolen, his coffee is spilled, his shoes are destroyed and everybody pees into his briefcase.

George Newton, the character Grodin portrays, does not have the sort of intelligence that might lend perspective to the situation. Here's a guy, not young anymore, who stands on the porch of his suburban home and muses out loud to himself, "Air fresheners do more than just freshen air." His plan is to mortgage the house to finance a new line of what he calls "Newtons."

"Oh, you're playing Monopoly," he says when he goes upstairs to relax with his kids. "Can I be the battleship?"

Even the bad people are dim bulbs. Regina, the dread dog-hater, is after a $50,000 divorce settlement; she's driving a $93,000 Mercedes.

Meanwhile, Beethoven, tired of his promising legal career, has fallen in love. He frees his girlfriend, Missy, from the prison the wicked Regina has had her locked in, and then they head out on a day of pleasure. The dog has no money, yet he and his date eat hot dogs and enjoy a movie, complete with popcorn. He even convinces one of those pathetic adult human males to pedal them around town on a gigantic tricycle.

Missy herself is no dimwit. For starters she manages to conceal a full-term pregnancy, which is more than your average high-school girl can get away with.

The dogs in "Look Who's Talking Now" are also at least twice as smart as the surrounding people. Rocks the mutt and Daphne the poodle fall in love despite class differences but still have enough energy and intelligence left over to keep their family together. No easy matter, especially when you consider that the missus drives herself and the kids off the road, in a snowstorm and in a forest which actually has timber wolves.

It's not just that the dogs are acting more and more like people. The people are acting more and more like dogs.

Take "Iron Will." Father Stoneman (John Terry) gives his son, Will (MacKenzie Astin), a lot of doglike advice: "Your place is where your dreams are. Don't ever forget that" and "Don't let fear stand in the way of your dreams, son."

Combine this seat-of-the-pants philosophy with what we already know about the stupidity of fathers, and we're not surprised when this one drives his sleigh into an icy river and dies.

At this point the boy's training is taken over by Ned Dodd (August Schellenberg), an Indian farmhand who, perhaps not surprisingly, is good with animals. "Trust the dogs," he tells the boy. "Run with the moon." "When you come to face the thing you fear, let the Creator guide you."

The people in "Man's Best Friend" aren't as open about their life views, but they aren't any of them rocket scientists. Meanwhile, the dog, Max, takes 350 spoken commands in English and Spanish. He doesn't always need to be told, either. When the postman shows up, for instance, Max not only kills him but then neatly buries the body under the house.

In "Baxter," a 1990 French film (not for children), the dirty-white bull terrier is always three jumps ahead of les humains, who seem both foolish and corrupt. "And don't let dogs lick you," a teacher tells her class. "They use their tongues for toilet paper." This is a couple of scenes before she's picked up in the arms of a man to whom she's not married. "Beat me, beat me," she tells him.

And so the conviction grows: Dogs aren't just better than people, they're also smarter. It's already too late, I suppose, for our children, or even our children's children, but maybe -- I mean, if Darwin had a clue -- then maybe our children's children's children won't have boys and girls, they'll have puppies instead. Which leaves me with just one question: Who will buy the tickets?

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports,
and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this review appears in print on January 9, 1994, on Page 2002011 of the National edition with the headline: FILM VIEW; Man's Best Friend and (Perhaps) Successor. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe